Mark turned round and looked at me. Was he handsome? If you were into older men (which I wasn’t) then the answer had to be, yes he was. He had good skin and a well-made face and a slightly nervous smile.

I didn’t smile back. I knew I probably should, since he was obviously making an effort, but I just didn’t feel like it. I wasn’t the sort of person who went round smiling at people just because they smiled at me.

He glanced briefly at Ellie, who was gazing at him like a slightly anxious puppy, and turned back to me. Maybe he figured that Mum would listen to my opinion. But if he really wanted to get in with us, shouldn’t he have figured out that the three of us came as a package – that he needed to make a good impression on all of us?

‘Good to meet you,’ he said, and reached out with his hand and waited for me to shake it.

At least his hand wasn’t too gross: it wasn’t hairy, and he wasn’t wearing a signet ring. Actually, it looked pretty much like a woman’s hand – soft and slim, with tapering, sensitive fingers. A piano-playing kind of hand.

Dad’s hands weren’t like that at all. They were broad and practical, as if they were made for fixing things. But they shook from too much booze, and it wasn’t easy for him to fix things any more.

My own hand was a bit hot and sticky and embarrassing, but there was no way out of it, so I took Mark’s and pressed it quickly and let it go.

He looked at me as if there was something he really wanted to say, but couldn’t. Something he felt bad about. Then he moved across to Ellie and held out his hand to her. She took it and clasped it and dropped it as if it had burned her, staring at him unblinkingly all the while.

Maybe Mum had warned him about how strange she was sometimes. Her reaction didn’t seem to faze him. He turned away and started the car, and off we went.

It was a pretty smooth ride. Mum drove an old banger, and I’d never been in a car as expensive as that. It smelled good, too. Mum never cleaned our car, and it smelled of old farts and feet; Mark’s car smelled of air freshener and manly aftershave. I didn’t want to like it. But I did.

Mark probably liked showing off his fancy car, and who could blame him?

I’d told Mum there was no need for him to pick us up. I could have taken Ellie into town to meet them. No big deal. But Mum had been keen for us to all go together. No doubt she loved being chauffeured around, for a change. She’d spent years driving Dad home from places back when they were still married, before Ellie was born. I could remember feeling worried for him when he’d thrown up out of the window, and cross with her for being angry with him about it. I hadn’t understood why he was being sick. I thought he was ill, which in a way he was.